Crucifixion is an ancient method of deliberately slow and painful execution in which the condemned person is tied or nailed to a large wooden cross and left to hang until dead. Crucifixion was used among the Seleucids, Carthaginians, and Romans from about the 6th century BC to the 4th century AD. In the year 337, Emperor Constantine I abolished it in the Roman Empire out of veneration for Jesus Christ, the most famous victim of crucifixion. It was also used as a form of execution in Japan for criminals, inflicted also on some Christians. A crucifix (an image of Christ crucified on a cross) is the main religious symbol for Catholics, Lutherans, and Eastern Orthodox, but most Oriental Orthodox and Protestant Christians prefer to use a cross without the figure (the “corpus”: Latin for “body”) of Christ. Most crucifixes portray Jesus on a Latin cross, rather than any other shape, such as a Tau cross or a Greek cross. Ancient Greek has two verbs for crucify: ana-stauro ), from stauros, “stake”, and apo-tumpanizo “crucify on a plank. ” [4] together with anaskolopizo (“impale”). In earlier pre-Roman Greek texts anastauro usually means “impale. ” For the instrument of crucifixion the word xylon was sometimes used, a word applied to any object made of wood.
